336 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



who is a born hustler himself and loves another, 

 offered him three dollars a day to finish the season. 

 However, he was anxious to remain with his people 

 and asked me if I could arrange to let him work at 

 the stacking, discing, and fencing with his brother 

 until he received a summons he was expecting from 

 Chicago. He said if it could be arranged he would 

 gladly accept a dollar a day as the rate of remunera- 

 tion. 



I wasn't in a position to afford an extra dollar a 

 month for labour just then, and, in fact, was mar- 

 shalling all my force and power of resource to meet 

 the day of the year's settlement, but it seemed 

 unwise as well as ungracious to refuse the labour 

 of so excellent a workman at such a rate of wages, 

 and in stacking oats I reckoned I should be preserv- 

 ing good spring feed, and also that I should evade 

 the cost of threshing at least five hundred bushels 

 which would balance his month's wages. He did 

 some fencing, which could not be described as 

 excellent, but in any case it is far cheaper to get 

 this fencing done by experts ; and at least he com- 

 pleted a very useful small pasture for the horses, 

 and meantime my bunch of cattle held fine bean- 

 feasts many hours a day round the stooks of frozen 

 wheat which marked the sacred five acres sown with 

 my hand-cleaned seed. Fate had decreed that these 

 acres should be left until the last, the grain was 

 frozen black — even the pigs looked at it with a 

 discontented air ; Nature, bless her, seldom provides 

 a moral to adorn a tale, she hasn't time. All the 

 grain that I reaped which was worth having, and it 

 was the best in the neighbourhood, I drew from 

 the six acres I had despised because of the light soil, 



